Barbados

Barbados has acquired the nickname "Little England"
because, through the centuries, it has remained the most British of the
Caribbean islands. Since wind currents made it relatively difficult to
reach under sail, it was not conquered and reconquered like most of its
Caribbean neighbors. British control over Barbados lasted from 1625
until independence in 1966. About fifty male settlers, including some
slaves captured en route, arrived in 1627 to settle the island, which
was uninhabited and had no food-bearing plants. Twelve years later, in
1639, the House of Assembly was formed, the only representative
legislature in the Caribbean to remain in existence for more than three
centuries. Barbadians are proud of their colonial heritage and used a
statement on individual rights and privileges from the 1652 Charter of
Barbados as a basis for the Constitution of 1966.

Following the introduction of sugar by a Dutchman in the early 1640s,
the island was deforested, and the economy became dominated by large
plantations. As the plantation economy developed, the land became
consolidated in the hands of a decreasing number of white familes,
leading, between 1650 and 1680, to the emigration of some 30,000
landless Barbadians, who left the island for other Caribbean islands or
North America. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, slaves
were imported from Africa by the thousands. In 1645 the black population
was estimated at 5,680; by 1667 it was over 40,000. As the slave trade
continued, Barbados became the most densely populated island in the
Caribbean, a position that it still held in the late 1980s (see The
Impact of the Conquest; The Colonial Period, ch. 1). Because labor was
plentiful, few indentured servants were brought to Barbados even after
emancipation in 1838.

During the eighteenth century, Barbados languished. The price of
sugar fell sharply as abundant supplies were produced more cheaply in
other islands. European wars and the American Revolution interfered with
trade, and the British embargo on shipment of American goods to British
colonies during the American Revolution also hurt Barbados severely. In
the early months of the embargo, food and supplies fell so low that
residents of Barbados would have faced starvation had not George III
ordered special food shipments in 1778. Barbados also suffered several
other calamities. Hurricanes devastated the island in 1780 and 1831. The
1780 hurricane killed over 4,000 people and destroyed most of the
island's buildings and livestock; the 1831 hurricane ruined many
buildings, including seven of the eleven churches on the island. In
addition, a cholera epidemic killed over 20,000 people in 1854.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Barbados resisted change. Although
free blacks were granted the vote in 1831 and slavery was commuted to an
apprentice system in 1834, with emancipation following four years later,
the ex-slaves stayed on the island and life remained essentially the
same. As historian Ronald Tree has put it, the hurricane of 1831 was
"followed by a hundred years of sleepy impoverishment, during which
time the island was a source of constant annoyance to the Colonial
Office." Barbados successfully resisted British efforts in the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to abolish its House of Assembly and
install crown colony government (see Glossary). The British had found
local assemblies to be intractable and cumbersome to manage from London.
Under the system called crown colony government, which was installed in
all of the Commonwealth Caribbean islands except Barbados, the British
replaced these argumentative assemblies with a unicameral legislature,
the majority of whose members were appointed by the governor, and in
which the king theoretically represented the lower classes (see
Political Traditions, ch. 1). As a result of multiple petitions,
Barbados managed to retain its local House of Assembly, which functioned
in addition to the governor's Legislative Council. Barbados was also
successful in securing the repeal of the British sugar tax.

For almost 300 years, Barbados remained in the hands of a small,
white, propertied minority who held the franchise. Reform finally came
after World War I, however, as a result of ideas brought back by
Clennell Wilsden Wickham of Barbados, Andrew Arthur Cipriani of
Trinidad, and others who had served in the British forces abroad (see
Precursors of Independence, ch. 1). Wickham returned home in 1919 fired
by enthusiasm to make Barbados a more democratic place. His newspaper
articles inspired Charles Duncan O'Neale to organize the Democratic
League, a political party that espoused franchise reform, old-age
pensions, compulsory education, scholarships, and trade union
organization. The Democratic League succeeded in electing a few
representatives to the House of Assembly between 1924 and 1932, but it
is chiefly remembered for inspiring O'Neale's nephew, Errol Barrow, to
found the Democratic Labour Party (DLP).

During the 1920s and 1930s, Barbados was confronted with a rapidly
growing population, a rising cost of living, and a wage scale that was
fixed at the equivalent of US$0.30 a day. Spontaneous rioting erupted
throughout the Commonwealth Caribbean in the late 1930s as the region
felt the effects of the worldwide depression. In Barbados, fourteen
people were killed and forty- seven wounded in protests in 1937.

The rioting spurred Grantley Adams to found the Barbados Labour Party
(BLP) in 1938. (The BLP was known briefly as the Barbados Progressive
League.) Adams, a lawyer who had won the Barbados Scholarship to Oxford
in 1918, became the most important figure in preindependence politics.
He quickly rose to prominence through his testimony before the British
Moyne Commission, which was charged with investigating the causes of the
regional disturbances in the late 1930s (see Labor Organizations, ch.
1). Adams argued that the main cause of the riots was economic distress.
Elected to the House of Assembly in 1940, Adams became president general
of the Barbados Workers Union (BWU) on its formation in 1941. Under
Barbadian governor Sir Grattan Bushe, the constitution was changed to
effect a semiministerial form of government, and the franchise was
progressively liberalized. During the 1942 House of Assembly session,
Adams led a fight for reforms that broadened the franchise by reducing
the cost of qualification, increased direct taxation, established a
workmen's compensation program, and protected union leaders from
liability in trade disputes.

Under the terms of the Bushe reforms, Adams became leader of the
government in 1946. Between 1946 and 1951, he presided over uneasy
coalitions in the House of Assembly as the BLP failed to win a clear
majority. In 1951, in the first election conducted under universal adult
suffrage with no property qualifications, the BLP captured sixteen of
the twenty-four seats. Although the BLP had finally gained a majority in
the House, Adams was unable to hold the party together. The BLP and BWU,
which had formerly acted in unison, pulled apart in 1954 after Adams
resigned as president of the BWU, became premier (the preindependence
title for prime minister), under a new ministerial system of government,
and neglected to include the new BWU president, Frank Walcott, in his
cabinet. Meanwhile, a new member of the House, Barrow, emerged as leader
of a discontented BLP left wing, which felt that Adams was too close to
the governor and not close enough to labor. Barrow had served in the
Royal Air Force in World War II and subsequently studied and passed the
bar in London. After returning to Barbados in 1950, he joined the BLP
and was elected to the House in 1951. In 1954 Barrow left the BLP and
the following year founded the DLP, which he led for the next thirty-two
years. In spite of Barrow's defection, Adams led the BLP to victory in
the 1956 election.

Plans for a British Caribbean federation had been drawn up in London
in 1953, and elections for a federative assembly were held in 1958. The
BLP also swept these elections, capturing almost all of the seats
allotted to Barbados; subsequently, Adams, who had been knighted in
1952, was elected prime minister of the West Indies Federation. He was
the only individual ever to hold that office because the federation
dissolved in 1962, when Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago both opted for
independence (see The West Indies Federation, 1958-62, ch. 1).

Adams's devotion to the cause of federation cost the BLP dearly. H.G.
Cummins, who had become premier of Barbados when Adams was elected prime
minister of the West Indies Federation, was unable to hold the party
together. By the late 1950s, unemployment, always a persistent problem
in Barbados, exceeded 20 percent. While Adams struggled with increasing
problems in the federation, Barrow supported the sugar workers in their
campaign for higher wages and in turn won their support for the DLP; as
a result, the DLP won the 1961 elections by a large majority. Barrow
became premier and continued to lead the government until 1971. Between
1961 and 1966, the DLP government replaced the governor's Legislative
Council with a Senate appointed by the governor, increased workers'
benefits, instituted a program of industrialization, and expanded free
education. Barrow also explored the possibility of joining another
federation of the so-called Little Eight islands (Antigua and Barbuda,
Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Christopher [hereafter, St.
Kitts]-Nevis-Anguilla, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines);
this too came to naught, however, and the DLP espoused full independence
with the concurrence of the opposition parties. The DLP won the election
of November 2, 1966, capturing fourteen of the twenty-four House seats.
On November 30, 1966, Barbados gained independence, and Barrow became
its first prime minister.